Kings: First Night

This episode takes place over a single night in the kingdom. The National Ballet is opening with Queen Rose in charge. She is annoyed to find out that a donor offered 100,000 to sit next to David, while seats next to the King were going for 10,000, leading to a slight twist on 1 Samuel 18:7b: David brings his hundreds of thousands, while Saul brings tens of thousands (I guess there has been a little inflation). So, she connives with Jack, who tells David that his seat was given to a donor– but how about if he shows David the city. He even flies in some of David’s pals from the front.

Meanwhile, the King’s illegitimate son, Seth, has fallen ill and his mother has taken him to the hospital. The kid has a medical condition which isn’t responding to the usual treatment. Silas exposes himself to the doctor as Seth’s father to be a blood donor.

Jack, as predicted, takes David and his friends to a party. Everything is free, and they don’t approach girls (they don’t need to). Debauchery ensues. However, Jack’s boyfriend, Joseph, shows up. He knows the drill — they’ll get together later. Jack is very abrupt with him; there is a reason he didn’t call. He gathers up David and the crew and they move on to the next stop, leaving Joseph in their dust.

I just knew that Phil, Michelle’s old friend, was going to have some sort of indecent proposal in exchange for backing her health proposal. No, he just wanted to see the King’s socks — to see how the real man lived. Michelle was none too happy to find out that her mother had arranged the whole thing, as well as David’s absence.

Samuels again had some great scenes. The one where he playfully pulls the King’s portrait so that it crookedly hangs on the wall says a lot about his opinion of Silas these days. Then, when Silas arranges to have him picked up by cops and then dumped on the side of the road for “counseling,” he tells Silas that God “is silent.” Does God want something in exchange for giving up Point Prosperity to Gath? Sacrifice is based on the level of offense, and Silas thinks God wants Seth (we do have precedent for that kind of thing), but isn’t willing to give him up. After hitting a deer with his car and seeing Seth survive the night, Silas realizes that he must make the sacrifice and heads out of the hospital.

Speaking of sacrifices, Joseph shows up at the next party stop, and Jack is even meaner to him this time, going so far as to have him thrown out of the party when he tells Jack that he loves him. Jack funnels his frustrations into beating a clubgoer into a bloody pulp. Then, the next morning when his friend Claudia tells him that David wouldn’t sleep with her (“he’s in love and doesn’t know how to stop… not like you”), he flies into a tortured rage. Sebastian Stan really did a good job with this scene. Jack’s reaction to Claudia’s comments are mostly shown in his eyes and quivering face as he realizes what he’s given up and how he went about doing it. You only hurt the ones you love.

However, Rose and Jack’s plan still worked. Jack’s buddy got photos of David and Claudia making out in the alley and leaked them to the press. Michelle is upset to see them on the Net the next morning and her mother rubs it in.

This episode was most instructive about Queen Rose and how she is the one pulling the strings. Apparently, she designed the monarchy when the people made Silas king. She set the plan to debauch David in motion because the monarchy works “when people look up to us,” not commoners like him. People came to the ballet the night before to see them, not the actual ballet. Michelle has pulled back the curtain a little too much and doesn’t like what she sees; she thought her mother planned the event because she loved the ballet. Uh, guess not.